Mr. Trump couldn’t have gotten as far as he has without the support, active or de facto, of many people who understand perfectly well what he is and what his election would mean, but have chosen not to take a stand.
Let’s start with the Republican political establishment, which is supporting Mr. Trump just as if he were a normal presidential nominee.
.. They know what kind of man they’re dealing with — but they are spending this election pretending that we’re having a serious discussion about policy, that a vote for Mr. Trump is simply a vote for lower marginal tax rates. And they should not be allowed to flush the fact of their Trump support down the memory hole when the election is behind us.
.. when Henry Kissinger and George Schultz piously declared that they were not going to endorse anyone, it was a profile in cowardice.
.. only a handful have risen to the occasion and been willing to say that if keeping him out of the White House is important, you need to vote for Mrs. Clinton.
.. A few seem to believe in the old doctrine of social fascism — better to see the center-left defeated by the hard right, because that sets the stage for a true progressive revolution. That worked out wonderfully in 1930s Germany.
Mr. Ryan, Your Views on Donald Trump? Next Question, Please
The House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, has expressed no particular opinion on the stop-and-frisk police tactics advocated this week by Donald J. Trump. He does not have any certain thoughts about Mr. Trump’s repeated praise of Vladimir V. Putin. He sort of suggested that Mr. Trump should release his tax returns, but what he really meant, it seems, is that candidates in general should do so. Then again, he said that he would “defer” to Mr. Trump on the decision.
.. Since Congress returned from its seven-week recess this month, Mr. Ryan has largely refused to answer any question about Mr. Trump, from his policy proposals and campaign antics to his latest controversial statements.
.. This is in stark contrast to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, who wasted no time in endorsing Mr. Trump and has maintained his support at roughly the temperature of a cup of day-old Earl Grey tea, rarely criticizing even Mr. Trump’s most incendiary remarks.
Seven Reasons It Made Sense for Donald Trump to pick Mike Pence
The running mate’s role is to support and amplify the boss’s message, not to usurp it. As Gingrich demonstrated on Thursday night, with his call for American Muslims to be subjected to a Sharia-law test, he’s not one of nature’s number twos.
.. Many of the potential problems with picking Gingrich also apply to the New Jersey governor, who is loud and domineering, and has an equally dismal approval rating: thirty-four per cent
.. Trump’s only realistic, or semi-realistic, chance of getting to two hundred and seventy electoral votes is to storm through the Midwest and the Rust Belt, racking up huge majorities of white votes. To this end, his ideal choice would have been John Kasich, the popular governor of Ohio, but Kasich didn’t want the job. Nor did Rob Portman, the Ohio senator who served in the Bush Administration, or Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin. And no one in Michigan or Pennsylvania was particularly suitable, either. That left Pence
.. In May, after wrapping up the nomination, he said, “This is called the Republican Party, not the Conservative Party.” But, like John McCain and Mitt Romney before him, Trump ultimately had to come to terms with the nature of the beast he is trying to ride to the White House.
.. Selecting Pence, a former head of the Republican Study Group on Capitol Hill, sends a signal that Trump is willing to work with the Party establishment and listen to what it says.
.. Ryan released a statement saying that there could be “no better choice for our vice-presidential candidate.”
.. Most people who take civil rights and the Constitution seriously are already aghast at the prospect of a Trump Presidency. Is there anyone out there who was willing to look past Trump’s call for a ban on Muslims, a resumption of torture, and the deportation of eleven million undocumented workers, but who will not vote for the Republican ticket because of Pence’s support for an Indiana law that allowed businesses to discriminate against gays and lesbians? Perhaps such people exist, but I doubt there are very many.
Paul Ryan’s Worst Ally
“He has actually proposed three — total, three — bills that have become law in his entire career dating back to 1999,” said David T. Canon, chairman of the political science department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. One named a post office in Wisconsin, a second changed taxes on arrows used by deer hunters, and the third, this year, established a $3 million presidential commission on “evidence-based policy making.”
.. “Paul Ryan is not a detail kind of legislator in terms of putting bills together to pass, and he never has been,” Professor Canon said. “He is an ideas guy. He’s not Lyndon Johnson — ‘let’s crack heads and get stuff done and actually pass some laws.’ ”
.. “If Trump wins, it will be because he will have found a way to campaign by marginalizing the core party and its leaders. Trump will conclude he doesn’t need Ryan’s ideas.”
.. “If Clinton wins,” Mr. Kettl continued, “it will be because Trump has made a shambles of the party and Ryan will have had to spend months diminishing himself by distancing himself from Trump. Either way, Ryan will face a massive rebuilding job. It’s conceivable that his wonky agenda will provide an ideological keel on which to rebuild the party. But that’s not likely.”
.. And as Mr. Ryan’s troublesome first year as speaker has shown, his challenges in passing legislation stem as much from Republicans’ divisions as from who is president. Congressional Republicans failed to agree on a budget resolution, which does not require a president’s signature.